The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-10-22
THE STORY TELLER.
TFanscrlpt.

teller, as we say in England, or liar as the precisian would put it. He wal as full of stories as an egg is full oi meat, or Democratic delegate is full
 of the spirit of the occasion the night
 before convention. No man ever en- countered Warmly without receiving
 samples of Yarnly's stock-in- trade
 and no man ever parted from him
 without mentally promising himself
 that, voluntarily, he would never
 meet Warmly again.
 Warmly was pleasant fellow, a very pleasant fellow. I don't remember ever to have seen him out of temper
 And yet it was fearful strain on one's good nature to meet Warmly, and many time l have gone miles out of my way to escape him.
 Ordinarily, however, Warmly wasn't
 so bad. He was bound to tell you a story or two. That was a matter of course, and one always braced himself to pass through the ordeal as manfully as possible. It was when somebody had been so foolish as to venture upon the telling of story in Yarnly's pres- ence that Warmly came out strong. Hardly had the misguided person finished his tale ere Warmly began to unload. It was interesting, it was pa- thetic, to note the gradations of de- spair which settled upon the unfortu- nate man who had set Yarnley a-going He would laugh good naturedly at Yarnly's opening story; the next would evoke an idiotic, ghastly smile; :; this would be followed, after the in- fiction of number three, by a look of painful weariness, and the victim would pass rapidly from despondency to extreme vexation and utter despair, his face outrivaling in acute anguish and undying hatred the visages of the lost in Dante's Inferno.
 But Warmly, nothing daunted, would keep on, story following story in un- ending succession, stories supposed to be new and stories unmistakably old, until the poor wretch who had been forced to listen sought refuge from his tormentor in cowardly flight.
 l hated this story telling habit of Yarnly's, hated it with all the venom that was ill me: and yet pitied him. l pitied him because of his inability to enjoy another's relations. Let the story be ever so entertaining no mat ter if it were fresh from the mint of the relator's vivid imagination, Warmly would show no interest in it what ever. He would listen, to be sure, but only to hear the pause which warned him that his own opportu- nifty had come; for Warmly could hear a pause as we'll as the Irishman of the narrative. It was all that Warmly could hear or cared to hear when another was speaking. But when the others voice ceased, he opened his ears as he opened his mouth; he was unwilling to lose a syl- liable of one of his own stories. His grew with repetition, and it was pleasure which made one almost forget his own pain to witness the light which irradiated Yarnly's fea- lures as he delivered himself of one of his oft-told tales.
 And then Warmly was so easily re- Let the occasio;. bo yhat it would utter in his presence the most serious remark or the most trivial commonplace, and instantly and inevi- tably was he reminded of what he was pleased to denominate "a good thing" and the "good thing" you had to take willingly, and half a dozen more "good things" to keep it company.
 It got so Tn time that could readily pick out Yarnly's victims from the crowd of passers-by in the street, or in gathering of the people. When I saw man with woe-begone ex- pression in his face, and demoraliza- tion figured in his form and expressed in his gait, and especially when I saw one with the button-hole of his coat frayed and distended, then did know him for Warmly sufferer.
 When Warmly died, so I am told, a friend was telling him little story. AS usual, Warmly was eagerly await ing it's conclusion, in order to take up the ball and reel off few of his own tales; but just as his friend ceased to speak Warmly ceased to breathe. It was probably the most dreadful death that ever befell mankind.
 If Yarnly's spirit has winged its flight to the realms of the blest, he can never be happy there if the mem- ory of his disappointment in his dying hour still haunts him, and if he has gone in another direction, nothing that he shall there experience can possibly compare in bitterness to the pang which the memory of that lost oppor- tunity must forever keep fresh in his nerturhad mind